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“Master Olly, do you ever feel like you should have stayed away from someone to avoid the heartbreak that comes with being with them?”
Olruggio looked down from his book. For inexplicable reasons, Tetia was stretched out like some kind of chatty, pink blanket over his lap. The two of them were reading together outside, under a cloudless blue sky.
“...What brought this on?” he asked.
Tetia sighed. He literally felt her deflate on top of his legs, which had fallen asleep a solid fifteen minutes ago. “Lillah just told Vinnys that they should never have met if they couldn’t be together.”
She was, of course, talking about the protagonists in the romance novel she was reading. Personally, Olruggio had never been one for romantic stories, though he remembered reading it obsessively it for a certain phase. During his childhood… confusion.
“That’s sad.”
“It IS!” Groaning, Tetia got up and plopped down in the grass next to Olruggio, giving his poor lap a reprieve. “Lillah shouldn’t have said that!! I mean, if they’d never met, they wouldn’t have fallen in love or done all those things together! How could she hurt Vinnys’s feelings like that?!”
“She’s only saying that because she hurts inside, I’m sure,” Olruggio reasoned, patting the dejected Tetia on the head. “I bet she doesn’t even mean it.”
“Yeah…” Tetia sniffled. She picked at the grass, depositing the blades on Olruggio’s skirt like she was scattering sprinkles on a cupcake. “Why can’t they be happy?”
“Hm…” One of the many tough things about children was how they asked rhetorical questions and expected real answers. Particularly for Tetia. Despite her exterior happy-go-lucky personality, she genuinely cared about the wellbeing of others, and treated their sadness as her own. She had an empathy that most adults didn’t have.
Olruggio looked up contemplatively at the fluttering wings of two passing Blushing Brides before responding, “Happiness is complicated. You mentioned it bein’ a forbidden romance ‘cause they’re from different kingdoms, right?”
Tetia nodded sadly.
“If it makes ya feel better, for all the pain she’s goin’ through for not being able to marry, at least they’re able to be… together.” The words appeared as though, somehow, they’d been sitting on his tongue for a long time. “I mean, yeah, they can’t be ‘together’ in the typical sense, but they have each other. They’re there for each other. And that’s what matters, ain’t it?”
There was a long silence, filled only by the distant laughter of the other girls. Olruggio wondered for a moment if he’d accidentally made the conversation too serious, but Tetia began to nod again, slowly.
“Maybe marriage isn’t the thing that matters,” she pondered, and the wonder in her voice suggested that this was her first time considering such a thing. For a romantic soul like herself, Olruggio was sure it was. Then she asked, “Master Olly, are you entangled in a clandestine romance?”
“Wha–?” Olruggio spluttered. His book fell to the ground. “E-entangled– ‘Clandestine’? Where are you pickin’ up these words??”
“Books.” Tetia kicked her feet. “Well? Are you?”
He was trapped. Although not as random or as difficult to answer as Richeh’s inquisitions, Tetia’s questions were insistent, and getting away from them was about as difficult as trying to get Coco to go back to bed after she was struck with a new idea. That is to say, very difficult.
“First of all, that’s private,” he said, thinking he was doing a pretty good job setting boundaries– though his face was heating up a lot faster than he wanted it to. “Second of all…… no, no I’m not.”
Tetia twirled a small flower between her fingers, sounding exceedingly unimpressed. “You don’t sound so sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“No, you’re not!” She sang with a smile. “Master Olly’s infatuated!”
“Don’t say that! No, I’m not!!”
“Master Olly’s what?”
Coco trotted up to them, covered in leaves and grass stains. Agott and Richeh followed suit. They peered curiously at Olruggio’s redness.
“You need to stop bothering Master Olruggio,” Agott told her sister apprentice, exasperated.
Tetia pouted. “No, I’m not, I swear! I was just asking him–”
“Alright, let’s stop right there–”
But before anything else could be said, a flutter of smoke-colored cloth heralded the arrival of Qifrey, walking up the hill behind the girls. When he caught sight of what was going on, he chuckled.
“Tetia, I do hope you’re not bullying your poor Watchful Eye.”
Waving at her teacher, Tetia shouted, “Master Qifrey!! Are you secretly in love with Master Olly?”
“Uh–”
“Okay, I think that’s enough talking for today!” Olruggio quickly covered her mouth, to which she made muffled retorts. He dragged her back toward the atelier while the others stared at them, a little aghast.
“Maaaasterrrr!!” cried Tetia, struggling to break free. “Why won’t you tell me anything??”